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Thoughts: Canadian Stereotypes

I am a proud Canadian and have been living in Vancouver for over eighteen years.

I love Vancouver and BC for its beautiful mountains and lakes- perfect for hikes in the summer and boarding in the winter. I also love all the great food we have (Vancouver has awesome sushi), but I think the greatest thing I love about Vancouver, BC, and Canada is that everyone is so accepting of different cultures. Essentially, we are just nicer.

I see so many Canadian stereotypes on the Internet. Aside from riding polar bears to school and living in igloos, most of them are true and that makes them even funnier. I can only speak for Vancouver, but we are truly very polite.

This is literally how Canadians do Door crasher Black Friday sale lmao. This is actually so Canadian it makes me cry pic.twitter.com/cCbgAqioQ9

We also say sorry a lot. One time when I was a volunteer orientation leader for a group of exchange students from Denmark, they commented on how funny it was that our buses said “Sorry, not in service” instead of just “Not in service”.

Or these other funny stuff like this:

Or this:

Or even this:

To add onto this growing list, this is what happened in one of my global marketing classes back in January. We were discussing cultural stereotypes and when it got to Canadian ones, my friend and I both raised our hands up at the same time and then continued to do the whole “You go first”, “Oh no, you can go first” dialogue – a perfect live example of real Canadians.

Although I can’t say all of these stories (aside from my own) are 100% true and credible, I think it shows a glimpse of Canadian culture, especially in the sense that we don’t mind poking fun at ourselves. The fact that these stereotypes are funny because it’s deemed “too nice” or “too polite” shows an aspect of Canadian culture that may or may not be exaggerated, but nevertheless still prevalent, otherwise it wouldn’t be relevant or funny to anybody.

If I think about why Canadians are (or at least, are thought to be) nicer, a major factor would again be that we are so open to people of different backgrounds and ethnicities. Growing up in an environment like this teaches children and adults to be more understanding and kind to others, and we see this influence our national presence and identity.